Novel came out this week so I ordered the hardcover from Amazon. Normally I would have ordered the Kindle edition but a book about the longevity of books needs to be read in an older form than an e-book.

I find Kat walking into the store and being into data visualization a little contrived (it was different in the short story but I recall almost equally contrived). I'm hoping something better than serendipity will emerge as an explanation.

The character name "Deckle" reminds me that I'm glad my copy of Penumbra isn't deckled. I don't mind old books being deckled but I dislike deckled new books, especially if they are artificially deckled.

Griffo Gerrtiszoon is almost certainly a merger of Francesco Griffo (the designer of typefaces at the Aldine Press) and Gerrit Gerritszoon (aka Erasmus, who worked for the Aldine Press as a Greek scholar).

We are told Gerritszoon was included on the Mac.

There is one typeface inspired by Francesco Griffo that has long been included on the Mac: Hermann Zapf's Palatino.

Interestingly Zapf considered Palatino a display typeface and designed a book weight complement called...wait for it...Aldus :-)

So I guess one could argue Zapf's Aldus is really Gerritszoon and Palatino is Gerritszoon Display.

But I think Palatino is most likely the typeface Sloan intended Gerritszoon to represent.

The books they are borrowing are codices vitae right? And they take then away and crack their code right? Doesn't that just give them the decrypted life story of a bound member? How do they know whose codex vitae to request next?

Actually, now that I think of it, are they always returning a book when they pick up a new one?